


Genoa

by Thimblerig



Series: The Lion and the Serpent [13]
Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Dubious people speak of dubious things, Gen, How can I torture Aramis some more?, I won't lie Milady is kinda mean, Implied Relationships, It didn't go past flirtatious talk I swear, secrets and lies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-25
Updated: 2015-11-25
Packaged: 2018-05-03 07:59:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5282987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>"It's a marvellous idea," Madame said dreamily.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Genoa

**Author's Note:**

> Reading this over, I'm not sure if I should add a warning or not.
> 
> It subverts a trope that turns up in some romance novels, kinda, plays a dark subject for laughs, kinda, and the trope itself can be a bit triggery for some. So... er.
> 
> Opinions are welcome.

Madame's raucous laughter shook the walls of her boudoir. "Tell me again," she said, moisture leaking from the corners of her eyes, "tell it to me again, 'Monsieur le Incubus'."

Aramis leaned against the wall, arms crossed. "The girl spied me coming through her chamber window," he said through gritted teeth. "She had some fancies. Rather than raise an outcry, _I went with it._ "

Madame laid a hand to her belly, "I'm sure you performed your duties creditably. Oh, my sides hurt."

"Yes, yes," he said, pulling a glove of lemon-coloured silk from the front of his black doublet. "And if in your hilarity you could share why it was necessary to steal the most precious treasure of a _dying girl...?_ "

"It's poisoned," she said. He dropped the glove. "Probably," she added, picking it up with a handkerchief wrapped hand.

"How do you know?"

She shrugged. "I've seen something like it before," she said, "and I was curious." She lifted the glove to her nose and blinked cat-green eyes at him. "Bitterness on the little dove's breath? Blackened tongue?" 

He conceded with a nod. "How do you know it was this?"

"If the dying stops, obviously. But also..." She sniffed the silk carefully. "That perfume... amber notes, citrus... an _excess_ of musk. I'd have said the perfumier was heavy-handed, but..." She smiled brilliantly. "There it is - that earthy, gravedust note, almost hidden." She pushed the glove at him and he leaned away. "Smell it!" she demanded.

He took it back reluctantly.

"It's a marvellous idea," Madame said dreamily. "A poison that works through the skin. Add it to a love-gift like a handkerchief or a glove, with scent to mask the odour..."

"Or a holy relic?" he asked, frowning.

She made the tip of a hand that said, _good_. "If you have a holy relic. Something the victim will find precious. Something to hoard close when trouble finds them... Lovely."

He shuddered.

"The poison that reaches the heart," she told him, "this is what it smells like."

"Do you _have_ a heart?"

"Pfff. It never did me any good, O my sweet dark angel. There's such a good match in smells - do you think the perfumier did it all in one? I might tour the workshops in the city tomorrow, you never know."

He stared at her.

She added, with the aggrieved sigh of someone stating the obvious, "If this glove does not carry your fainting maiden off, whoever sent it will try again."

With a flare of his cape, he left the room.

**Author's Note:**

>  _"It's a marvellous idea," Madame said dreamily._ \- she has to maintain her villain cred _somehow_. Have a heart.
> 
> Dousing handkerchiefs or gloves in scent was a fairly common practice at the time. (The association of gloves with perfume was strong enough that a glove-and-perfume guild was founded some years later.) And scents sometimes took complicated distilling and what not. Not unreasonable that a perfumier would have the same skill set required to manufacture the weird poison used in 1.07. If you're interested, here are the references I looked through while writing this.
> 
> https://thepragmaticcostumer.wordpress.com/2013/07/02/ive-been-scent-from-the-past-17th-and-18th-century-perfumes/  
> http://madameisistoilette.blogspot.co.nz/2013/02/honey-water.html  
> https://theperfumemistress.wordpress.com/2012/05/15/courtly-beauty-secrets-from-the-17th-century/ 
> 
> As to the slow-acting nature of this case? In 1.07, the men who stole the poison and died very quickly must have gotten a lot of it on their skin, I guess, because the Cardinal went a lot slower. I would make a guess that its chief attraction is that it generally kills slowly, from small repeated doses, and looks like a natural illness. I have been thinking far too much about how to kill people and get away with it, oh dear.
> 
> I may well write one of the conversations Aramis and Fainting Dove had, because I am a horrible person.


End file.
